Category: Autism Awareness

An introduction to Autism Acceptance Month/ Autism Appreciation Month and a few photographs.

INTRODUCTION

Officially April is designated Autism Awareness Month. In this post I will give my view as to why this designation should be rejected and what the alternative, as articulated by autistic people should be.

AWARENESS

Firstly the notion of ‘Autism Awareness’ is tainted by the mere fact of who the main organisation pushing it are, who I will not name here. Suffice to say that their many misdeeds include being responsible for the video nasty “I Am Autism”, and that they are associated with the colour blue and with the puzzle piece symbol. I am glad that I am separated from them by the width of an ocean!

Secondly, even if the first point above did not apply, ‘awareness’ is simply not sufficient as a bannerline aim. Awareness does not equate to understanding, and that latter is the barest minimum that is required…

UNDERSTANDING, ACCEPTANCE, APPRECIATION, RESPECT

Understanding of autism is merely a good starting point (and there are ton of places where you can find autistic people writing about autism, some which I shall list later). It needs to lead to acceptance of us for who we are, appreciation of our good points and respect for us as human beings.

PLACES TO LEARN ABOUT AUTISM

This list is not (never in the proverbial million years) exhaustive, but it gives you some good pointers.

#REDINSTEAD, #LIGHTITUPGOLD & THE RAINBOW INFINITY SYMBOL

The organization I refuse to name tells people to #lightitupblue, for which reason that colour is off-limits (except when it appears in photos) to this site at least for the month of April. The first two elements of the title of this section refer to alternatives. This blog is following #RedInstead simply because gold letters don’t really stand out against a white background. The Rainbow Infinity Symbol, a customized version of which heads this blog, while another appears on my personal cards, is an excellent alternative to the discredited puzzle piece for the role of autism symbol. Here courtesy of stimtheline is the Autistic Bill of Rights:

INTRODUCTION

I finished my posts about the two major autism events I have recently attended ahead schedule, so I am producing an extra post today. This post will contain some autism related links, a solution to the problem I posed on Saturday, a new problem, and a handful of photographs.

A SOLUTION

On Saturday, in a post titled Setting the Stage for Tomorrow and Monday I set a problem about an email spam filter. I now present the answer, and my favourite of the published solutions, offered by Aaa-Laura Gao Gao.

SOME AUTISM RELATED LINKS

First of all, the last blog-related thing I did yesterday was to create a page containing links to everything that I had posted about the two autism events I recently attended.

Next up come two pieces that tackle the organization known in autistic circles as Autism $peaks or sometimes just A$:

An open letter to A$ co-founder Suzanne Wright from the parent of an autistic child, published on the Autism Womens Networkunder the title “For God’s Sake Stop Speaking“. I quote one paragraph below:Your insistence that your tragic ideas on how autism should be viewed, managed, and treated be forcibly imposed on every country in the world is frightening in its scope and ambition. The very loud horn of the autism apocalypse you keep blowing at the world is sad because there is so very much good you could do. I cannot grasp this hate filled fear mongering in someone who has a neurodivergent grandchild. I would think you would want to use every means at your disposal to insure the world accepts him and supports and accommodations are made for him to actively participate in every community. I can’t help but wonder how he feels about a grandmother who speaks publicly about how difficult his existence is on his mother as you did in your previous unfortunate address to Washington.

Then she goes on to say “I’m also reaching out to fellow parents in pain to remind them to cast off shame,“. Not only an article but an entire book about the pain and shame of having an autistic child. To me, this is a self-centered, retrograde, outmoded idea. If one truly intends to cast off shame, how about starting by not calling it a tantrum, or not offering an explanation that sounds like “he’s broken” followed with “but it’s not my fault, I’m just a martyr of a mother, please recognize that!”

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the fifth and final installment in my Autism Events series, concluding my account of the Anna Kennedy Autism Expo a week ago yesterday (still to come are some related posts on my London transport themed website and a page on this site bringing everything together).

THREE MORE TALKS

I will handle these talks in exact chronological order, starting with…

THE AUTISTIC DAD

This one was slightly problematic for me, although I welcome another autistic person being given the opportunity to speak. The biggest problem I had lay in his comments about vaccines, which I found particularly hard to stomach given that since he is autistic there is an obvious genetic component to his son’s autism. This talk did not inspire as much as I had hoped, and a week on I do not feel any happier about it.

SPORT FOR CONFIDENCE

This was a wonderful talk by Lyndsey Barrett, a former netball international (she had a very serious illness which nearly killed her, but is now back playing netball to a good level although she has not yet been recalled by England) and founder of the eponymous Sport for Confidence.

AN EXCELLENT FINISH

HOMEWARD BOUND

Leaving the event I headed back to Uxbridge station, and got a Metropolitan line train into London, arriving at King’s Cross in good time to catch the 18:44, arriving into King’s Lynn at 20:22. Here are a few pics from the return journey, although the battery in my camera was running on fumes by that stage of the day.

This footbridge is at Hillingdon, one stop out from Uxbridge.The station building at Rayners Lane, which functions as a bridge between the platforms as well is one Charles Holden’smost famous.Chiltern Railways, with which the Metropolitan is closely integrated. Chiltern Railways‘ historical predecessor, the Great Central railway was a creation of Sir Edward Watkin, who also ;played a massive role in the Metropolitan’s history. This train is at Harow-on-the-Hill.A distant view of Wembley Stadium.

Takes my story of the Anna Kennedy Autism Expo up to the end of the first of the talks that I attended.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the fourth post in my Autism Events series. This is Part 2 of my coverage of the Anna Kennedy Autism Expo which took place at the Eastern Gateway Building, Brunel University. For those joining the series at this point the previous post are:

This post will cover the remainder of the stalls at the event and the first of the talks that I attended.

AROUND THE HALL

This is a story that will be told largely via photographs…

Autistic artwork.

Yes folks – a whole stall devoted to selling fidget/stim toys.

PAUL ISAACS TALK

Paul is autistic himself, and his talk was both informative and inspiring. Notice that as with the Autism Anglia event in Norwich this event gave autistic voices lots of opportunity to be heard. Here are some pictures from this talk.

Because of the shape of the meeting room it was equipped with two big screens, one for each half of it.Paul’s talk on the screen.Paul ready to start his talk, while event organiser Anna Kennedy watches from the corner. She kept all the speakers informed as to how they were doing timewise.Paul Isaacs speaking

Autistic and Aspergian traits.

Close up of the Aspergian traits listAutistic traits close upThe ones in the middleAlthough I choose when using such descriptions to refer to myself as an autistic person, with ‘person’ coming after ‘autistic’ I am with Paul in asserting my personhood.Paul’s considerable output.

INTRODUCTION

Most of this post covers events from a week ago yesterday, but before I get into the main body of it there is on little thing I need to attend to first:

AN AMENDMENT AND AN APOLOGY

For those of you who saw the original version of Autism Events II, you will notice should you revisit it that I have removed many of Amanda Hind’s slides from it. This was at her specific request, on the course of a very friendly twitter exchange. I have never previously been asked to remove photographs of slides from a post, but I fully acknowledge Amanda’s right to make the request, and I acted on it very promptly. This is by way of both explaining why I edited that post after it had been up for a while and apologizing in this blog for publishing more of Amanda’s slides than she was happy to see published.

THE ANNA KENNEDY AUTISM EXPO – GETTING THERE

The event was taking place at Brunel University’s Eastern Gateway building in Uxbridge. This meant getting a train and changing at King’s Cross. The Metropolitan line route from King’s Cross to Uxbridge is more direct than that of the Piccadilly line, and the Metropolitan line platforms take less long to get to from the railway line, so I opted for that route. I also decided that even though it would almost certainly mean not being there for the very start of the event that I would get the 6:54 rather than the 5:54 from King’s Lynn. I will be covering the Metropolitan line element of the journey in detail on my London transportthemed website, but here are some photos from the journey…

On the platofrm – note that mine is the second train due in.The chesham train – doors open.The new stock operating on the Circle, District, Hammersmth & Cty and Metropolitan lines is articulated in the manner of Swedish Tunnelbana stock rather than using old-fashioned bogie couplings.The route map at King’s Cross St PancrasThe Metropolitan line route map on the train.A Jubilee line train (from just before Finchley Road to just after Wembley Park the Jubilee and Metropolitan lines run side by side)Crossing Kilburn High Road.A Piccadilly line train (from Rayners Lane to Uxbridge the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines run in tandem).A roundel at Uxbridge station.The clock at Uxbridge station.Stained glass windows at Uxbridge station.The outside frontage of the station

The full surface building.

The walk from Uxbridge Station to the venue was supposed to take about 25 minutes, but I went the wrong way at first, so it took me a bit longer than that. I arrived at the venue a bit late, but soon got stuck into visiting all the stalls, to see what people were doing and to tell people about myself and NAS West Norfolk. I will now share a few thoughts and photos from a couple of those stalls.

I spoke to two of the people from this company, which creates games aimed specifically at helping SEND children, including autistic children. I got to sample a couple of the games as well – they look very good to me. Please note that the title of this section is formatted as a link to their homepage.

Some of the products.This is a viciously hard game – you have 30 seconds to look at the shape and memorise it and you then have to use the blocks to construct it.This is tough in the early stages, but as more spaces are filled it gets easier to place your pieces.This one can be played in two ways. Either require the players to memorise the shape they will be building or leave it on display. You have to place as many blocks as you can without rotating them, then when no more can be used towards making the shape pick the unused blocks up and roll them like dice to reveal new faces, and so on until you have completed the shape (the completed shape here, using light blue blocks was the work of yours truly.

Joely Colmer is an autistic woman whose website I linked to via the title of ths section. As well as her website she is the author of a book about her experiences, “Aspergerworld: My Fairy Jam Jar”.

SOME PHOTOS FROM THE VENUE

I will end this post with some of the photographs I took of general stuff at the venue:

These last two poctures are of a boat that hangs from the ceiling of that building.It is of the type referred to in rowing circles as a ‘light four’ (there are two types of four person rowing boats, the light as seen here, and the ‘tub four’).

The first in a series of posts about a couple of autism events that I ahve attemded recently.

INTRODUCTION

I have had the good fortune to attend two autism events in the last few days. NAS West Norfolk, of which I am branch secertary funded my attendance at both events, and so I travelled with a bundle of NAS West Norfolk leaflets as well as my own personal cards. This is the first of a series of blog posts I will be writing about these events, and therefore includes a…

I hope that the above makes it clear why I am only just starting this series of posts and why I still have a large number of photos from the last few days to edit.

THE AUTISM ANGLIA EVENT

The bus ran a bit late, which meant that I arrived at the venue later than I would have liked. However, I was in time to get into the first talk I had booked for, Alan Bicknell of Autism Anglia talking about “The Uniqueness of Autism”. I impressed the speaker with three useful interventions – first up responsing to his request for a ‘guess’ as to how many people in the UK were likely to be on the autistic spectrum. I reasoned in Holmesian fashion that given the UK’s overall population and the popularly reckoned instance of autism being 1 in 68 the figure was likely to be somewhere in the region of 1,000,000. I was in the right ball park, with the speaker’s own reckoning being somewhere in the region of 800,000. My second intervention was to identify the author of the the ‘Thomas the Tank Engine‘ stories (Reverend W Awdry – his son Christopher continuing the family tradition). My third and final intervention was in response to his question “Can we all be a little bit autistic?” To which I said a very firm no, and backed this up when asked to expand on that answer by stating that ‘we are all a little bit autistic’ cheapens and demeans the very real difficulties faced by those of who are #actuallyautistic. He thanked me for making those points, and subsequently when I spoke to him after the talk he again thanked me for my contributions.

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THAT FIRST TALK

Alan Bicknell speaking

SESSION TWO: SIAN HUTCHINGS

Ms Hutchings is autistic herself, and her talk was based around her own life and experiences, before focussing on educating autistic people. This was in the same venue as the first talk I had booked to attend. Sian’s talk was absolutely amazing, and although the photographs with which I end this post give you some basic idea of it, you really had to be there to hear it.

These big screens look a lot like giant Ipads, and as I saw when one speaker poked the screen in making a point they also work a bit like giant Ipads – he was a bit discombobulated when the next slide appeared early.Their size is not the only thing about this screens the connects them to giants!Sian Hutchings

GENERAL LINKS

My next piece comes from The Guardian, and is Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley on why the Greens will not simply fold into Labour. It is an excellent piece, well worth reading. I would say that Labour and the Greens can work together, and that if Labour are able to form a government after the next General Election they should still seek to put Ms Lucas in charge of environmental policy even if they have an outright majority that would entitle them appoint ministers exclusively from their own ranks.

This feeds nicely into the final piece in this section, a petition calling for Environmental Studies to be part of the National Curriculum. As this petition is on the official site for petitiions to the UK parliament only UK citizens can sign it – if you are one and want to sign it please click on the screenshot below:

My next link is from the the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism and is titled “The Toxicity of “Autism Parent” Memoirs“. Please note that this piece does not at any point even suggest that parents of autistic children should not write about their children’s experiences – it merely points out recent examples where this has been done in a way that is not acceptable.

My next post, courtesy of Fire Bright Star Soul, is an example of a parent of an autistic child writing about one of said child’s experiences in exactly the right way. “Autistic and Suspended” could serve as a model for how to write such stories. Below is a quote from the middle of the piece (the first of the two paragraphs is italicised in the original as well):

I spoke with the assistant principal of her grade, and he was compassionate, thoughtful and had an easy way with B. After speaking with both him and me, she decided not to have me take her home from school but try to push through it and stay the rest of the day. I was extremely proud of her for making that effort, and it worked. It’s a step toward success for her, because she is making progress to self regulation and learning that even if she has a meltdown, it doesn’t mean the ruin of the rest of her day. She can calm down, pick herself up and keep going. This won’t always be the case of course, but it’s an achievement on her part that I am happy to celebrate for the victory that it absolutely is. A year ago she would have been down for the entire day.

A word: By now you are probably aware that I follow a strict self-restraining policy of not posting any detail of my daughter’s life as an autistic without her express consent, and this is no different. We discussed this last night, and I explained why I wanted to write about it. She was amenable to this, so here we are.

A SOLUTION AND A NEW PROBLEM

There is 1 way you can have three reds all adjacent, and 2 ways you can have two of the reds be on opposite edges (distinguished by whether the green is opposite the third red or not). That gives,

1+2 = 3

My new problem for you, also from brilliant, is a variation on a very old theme, which caught a surprising number of solvers on the hop:

PHOTOGRAPHS

As the world knows (since many of us Brits are absolute drama queens about such matters) we have recently had some rough weather, which means I do not have as many pictures at my disposal as usual, but here are some:

Although the weather had definitely eased by Saturday not all the snow had melted

Musical keys ran as normal.

Today was wet at times, but never really cold (though I would have advised against anyone going out without a coat)A redshank near the Nar outfall, earlier today.